Just another fucking thing to add to the list.
The car was parked in the back yard of the house, pulled around onto the dirt because the front door of the house was a pain in the ass and jammed, so everyone used the back kitchen door instead.
Justin ushered Harper and Wyatt down the back steps and pulled the door shut behind him. He locked it, and then carried Scarlett to the car and strapped her into the baby seat. She was still screaming.
Wyatt and Harper climbed in the back.
Justin got in the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition and turned it.
Nothing.
He tried it again.
Nothing, not even a splutter.
Justin blinked, his eyes stinging, and stared through the cracked windshield and up into the dark night sky. His chest ached, and he fought the urge to break down into tears. He just couldn’t catch a fucking break, could he? Just couldn’t have something go right, just once? And now here he was, sitting in a car that refused to start, in the middle of the night, while Scarlett screamed and screamed and screamed.
Justin had never felt like more of a fucking failure in his life.
And then, just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, Harper pushed open the back door of the car and ran.
* * * *
The O’Dwyer house was at the end of a dirt road on the southern side of Enterprise. It had been a farm once, way back when, but the land had got parceled out and sold off over the years until it was nothing more than a patch of dirt with the house on it, surrounded by vine maples. There was a shallow gully edged by Pacific ninebarks that ran along the back of the property and filled with water when the snow melted in the spring, but was dry in the summer. There were a couple of rusted out cars down the back of the yard that had been there as long as Justin could remember. He didn’t know who they’d ever belonged to, but he guessed it was the raccoons now.
“Harper!” he yelled, holding Wyatt tightly by the hand. “Harper, get back here!” From the car, Scarlett was still screaming. A part of Justin wanted to slam the doors shut on her just to try to block out the sound. “Harper!”
She hadn’t run back into the house. She had to be hiding somewhere close by, surely? Or she was a braver kid at six than Justin had been to dash off into the trees in the middle of the night. Justin had always been scared of the monsters in the dark.
“Harper! Please! Scarlett needs the hospital!”
Although how he was going to get here there was the next fucking problem, wasn’t it? He’d charge his phone and call for an ambulance if he had to, but even if he was allowed to ride with them, what was he supposed to do with Harper and Wyatt? How had Mom managed to hold this shit together for so long when Justin was losing it after only four days?
She didn’t, an acerbic voice in the back of his head told him. You really think she even noticed if the kids got sick?
He remembered the lukewarm bath she’d given him that time, years and years ago. She’d noticed once. She’d been a mom once.
“Harper!” he yelled again, and this time he saw a flash of light color through the trees: Harper’s pajama pants.
Justin tugged Wyatt over to the car while he got Scarlett out of her seat. Then, holding a squirming, screaming Scarlett on his hip and grasping Wyatt’s hand firmly, he set off into the trees after Harper.
Don’t trip, he told himself as he half-skidded into the gully, pulling Wyatt behind him. Don’t fucking trip.
He was at the end of his tether now, and every one of Scarlett’s wails was like nails on a goddamn chalkboard. He was scared, and he was frustrated, and he was so fucking angry at Harper right now—and at Mom, because this was all her fault—and hot tears burned his eyes as he strode through the darkness, leaves crunching under the thin rubber soles of his sneakers.
He hadn’t asked for any of this, but he was trying his fucking hardest, okay? He was trying his hardest, but it just wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough.
All of his anger drained away when he reached Harper at the end of the gully where the sides flattened out and the gully became nothing more than a small dip in the land at the edge of a field. Harper was sitting there beside a tree stump, her back stubbornly turned, and her arms clasped around her knees.